A Post-Pandemic Visit to French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts

One of the most disturbing moments from the early days of the pandemic - at least for me personally - occurred when I read a New York Times article in which Ron Schaefer, the larger-than-life, 83-year-old founder of French Woods Festival of the Perfirming Arts, who was being interviewed, suggested that the half-a-century-old Upstate New York theater camp would probably be forced out of business if the overwhelming majority of parents of campers demanded refunds due to the soon-to-be-officially-canceled 2020 summer season.

"2020 was a tremendous financial loss for every camp director," Schaefer told me. "All of us went into tremendous debt. We ran an online program but it brought in just a bit of revenue. If there had been a second year of the shutdown, we would have been done, along with most of the other camps out there."

As a teenager in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I spent five indispensable summers at French Woods, where I obtained a comprehensive education in theater by acting in plays and musicals and attending countless other productions. (I began working as a theater critic just weeks following my final summer at French Woods.) The very idea that the pandemic would take away not just a single summer of French Woods but might have closed the place permanently was unthinkable.

In 2017, after a long absence, I was invited by Schaefer to visit the camp, check out his production of Pippin, and hold a masterclass on theater criticism, which I then wrote about in an article for BroadwayWorld. In 2019, I went up again in order to attend an all-female version of 1776, which marked the first time the camp presented 1776 since I played John Adams in 2001. (Impressively, French Woods revamped and even re-orchestrated 1776 before Broadway did.)

It would not have been possible to visit French Woods in 2021 due to the strict health and safety procedures that were put in place in order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. Campers underwent COVID tests days just prior to arriving at camp and once again upon arriving. Masks were mandatory for the first five days of camp. According to Schaefer, only a single camper tested positive for COVID-19 last summer. After one visiting day for parents was held early in the summer, the camp decided it was too risky to do it again. Parents, unable to see their children's productions in person, watched via livestream.

I was finally able to pay another visit to French Woods at the end of the 2022 summer season. But rather than see another musical (such as The Prom, which received its amateur premiere at French Woods this summer), I was able to witness what has become one of the most celebrated annual traditions at French Woods in recent years: the "Side by Side" orchestral concert, which brings together the French Woods Symphony Orchestra and members of the New York Pops orchestra, plus vocalists comprised of both campers and Broadway performers. As it happened, this summer's "Side by Side" concert was conducted by one of the camp's most celebrated alumni, Jason Robert Brown.

Upon arrival at the camp, I was immediately sent to a rehearsal already in progress for Schaefer's production of West Side Story, which would mark the fourth show he had directed that summer (following Chicago, Sweeney Todd, and Fiddler on the Roof during earlier sessions) and serve as the "closing show" of the summer. Schaefer has directed West Side Story numerous times at camp over the years - including in 1999, when I did the show alongside Celia Mei Rubin (Matilda, Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812).

Back then, I played Chino - likely because I was not a dancer and thus not talented enough to play any of the Jets. (As Chino, I instead brandished a prop gun and made an embarrassing attempt at a Puerto Rican accent.) As I learned during my visit, I probably would not have been cast as a Shark at French Woods today. As in the theater industry at large, racial and ethnic authenticity in casting has become a principal concern at French Woods, especially among the campers themselves. In fact, according to Schaefer, two young women refused to even be considered as Maria or Anita in West Side Story because they were Jewish and Caucasian. Similarly, in earlier in the summer, a boy announced that he did not want to be considered for a role in Fiddler since he was not Jewish.

That being said, rehearsal for West Side Story was not so different from how it was in my day. The (impressively well-behaved) campers ran through the first act, scripts in hand, executing the dance choreography in spite of the space limitations of the cramped rehearsal studio. Schaefer's notes to the cast ("If you two don't touch each other I'm going to kill you...If a Shark isn't ready to go onstage right now he's an idiot...This is the most unexciting fight I've ever seen") sounded like comments he made 23 years ago. The cast was great, including Ashley Hoberman as a lively Maria, Max Guttman as a soft-spoken Tony, and Hayes Philip as an authoritative Bernardo.

Following West Side Story rehearsal, I sat in on a masterclass on song interpretation given by Jason Robert Brown to some of the most promising artists at camp. Brown meticulously deconstructed and rebuilt each camper's performance, questioning who each of them was singing to and what they wanted and urging them to cut out unnecessary gestures and use their natural voices. "You've been Audra McDonald for so long you can't find your own accent," Brown told a female who had chosen "On the Street Where You Live" as her song. "What do you actually sound like? I want you to feel like you can be you," Brown said.

Compared to the prior theater criticism workshops I have conducted at French Woods, which have resembled lectures in which the campers made just a few casual and polite comments, this summer, the campers who attended my workshop were fiercely opinionated and assertive. I barely needed to talk at all. I simply posed a question about the duties of a theater critic and they segued into a vigorous debate. They didn't need me there at all: these kids were already theater critics.

The "Side by Side" concerts, which have now been held at French Woods for a decade, are the result of the tireless endeavors of longtime French Woods conductor Brian Worsdale, who is the music director of the Three Rivers Young Peoples Orchestras and director of the New York Pops' Kids on Stage program. Leading up to the concerts, New York Pops members teach masterclasses and rehearse alongside the youth musicians. Campers can audition to sing at the concert alongside the likes of Kerry Butler, Andrea Burns, and Max von Essen, who have previously been featured vocalists.

Jason Robert Brown attended French Woods as a camper a bit more than a decade ahead of me. In fact, I attended French Woods while Parade and The Last Five Years were receiving their professional premieres, and when Songs for a New World received its camp premiere (in a terrific 2000 production directed by Brian Kite, featuring Celia Mei Rubin, Ana Nogueira, and Joshua William Gelb).

Although Brown conducted pit orchestras as a camper, the "Side by Side" concert marked the first time he had conducted a symphony orchestra concert at French Woods. The concert program included selections from Songs for a New World, Parade, The Last Five Years, and Honeymoon in Vegas, plus orchestral suites from The Bridges of Madison County (which, as Brown noted, is unlikely to ever be performed at French Woods) and Trumpet of the Swan, and "Wait 'Til You See What's Next," a discarded version of the finale from the Hal Prince revue Prince of Broadway. I was a bit surprised that no song from 13 (the screen version of which had premiered on Netflix just a few days prior to the concert) was included. French Woods presented the first post-Broadway production of 13 in 2009.

The professional vocalists at the concert included Jesse Nager (a veteran of both French Woods and Broadway who is currently artistic director of the vocal group The Broadway Boys) and Kristy Cates (the original understudy for Elphaba in Wicked on Broadway), who took over at the last minute for Betsy Wolfe, who had come down with laryngitis. Nager was smashing, knocking it out of the park in the upbeat pop anthem "Invisible" (which appears on the album How We React and How We Recover), "He Told Me to Watch the Door" from Parade (which I saw Nager perform years ago in concert with Brown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City), and the gospel-flavored "Flying Home" from Songs for a New World (in which he was accompanied by a choir of campers). The teens who sang solo acquitted themselves well, especially Lana Schwartz, who performed "I'm Not Afraid of Anything" from Songs for a New World. Brown topped off the event by taking the piano and singing "Moving Too Fast" from The Last Five Years.

Brown, who described the process of putting the concert together as "the craziest two days in the world," remained in good spirits throughout the performance - including when a wave of coughing overtook the audience of campers. In response, during a break in the program, Brown urged everyone to let it all out with one big communal cough and then declared "Dayenu." I have attended many of Brown's concerts over the year and he always proves himself to be a consummate musician and showman, as well as a self-deprecating comedian. (If they have not done so already, the New York Pops might want to consider adding a Jason Robert Brown concert to its annual subscription series at Carnegie Hall - and perhaps taking some French Woods kids along for the ride.)

My visit to French Woods showed a camp in the midst of incredible transition - moving out of the pandemic, taking in new cultural trends and expectations - and yet still putting up large-scale theatrical productions with children and teens in as little as two and a half weeks and offering a one-of-a-kind camping experience. I hope to attend another rehearsal of West Side Story at French Woods in 20 years.

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Watch highlights from the "Side by Side" concert here and here.